


Cake

by DiscordantWords



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Crime Scenes, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, First Meetings, Gen, Guilt, POV Sally Donovan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 02:59:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15039212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscordantWords/pseuds/DiscordantWords
Summary: "So it was all a game, then?" she asked. She could not look away from the television. Anger was starting to seep in, starting to push away that numb shock. "Play dead for two years and then—what? Shoutsurprise!and jump out of a cake?"





	Cake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thetimemoves (WriteOut)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriteOut/gifts).



> A little Holmestice treat for write_out, who mentioned enjoying backstories and first meetings. I'd had this idea kicking around in my head about Sherlock and Sally's first meeting for quite a while, and you gave me the perfect excuse to write it down. 
> 
> **Please Note:** This fic is rated M because it includes a fairly graphic description of a gory crime scene. It's all intended to read as sort of darkly humorous, but please do not read on if this disturbs you.

*

Sally's phone was ringing, but she did not take her eyes off of the television to see who was calling. She supposed she already knew. 

"He's alive," she said, pressing the phone against her ear. Her words emerged slow, a little stunned. 

"I just saw him," Lestrade said. The connection was poor. But he sounded happy. A little giddy. Shocked.

She thought about the day Sherlock Holmes had died, about the way her eyes had burned from lack of sleep and how she had been on her fourth cup of coffee when the news had come in. She thought about Lestrade's face when he'd taken that phone call, the way he'd gone from looking grim and determined to utterly defeated. The way his shoulders had slumped, the way he'd gone back into his office and put his head in his hands. 

She thought about the Chief Superintendent, who had been rampaging about like a wild animal beset by a swarm of bees. There had been a strip of tape over the bridge of his nose—it had, thankfully, not been broken, only bloodied—and the thin skin under his eyes had begun to swell and darken. 

_Well, that's that,_ the Chief Super had said. He'd nodded, crossed his arms like he'd accomplished something. _Only a guilty man would—well—go and do something like that._

It had not been difficult for her to imagine Sherlock Holmes as a murderer. But it had also not been difficult for her to imagine several scenarios in which a man, decidedly _not guilty_ , would do as the freak had done and fling himself off a building. 

She had not felt relief or satisfaction at the news. Instead, there had been something cold pooling in the pit of her stomach, something that felt an awful lot like doubt. Or guilt. 

Two years she'd spent, smothering that feeling. 

Now—

"So it was all a game, then?" she asked. She could not look away from the television. Anger was starting to seep in, starting to push away that numb shock. "Play dead for two years and then—what? Shout _surprise!_ and jump out of a cake?" 

And her own words made her wince, made her stomach turn over and her throat clench. Made her _remember—_

The first time she had ever laid eyes on Sherlock Holmes he was standing in the bathtub of a dingy Stratford flat, shirtless and hunched over a corpse, buried to his forearms in the man's stomach cavity. 

The crime scene had been secured.

Supposedly. 

She'd gone inside to have a look and ice had slid down her spine at the sound of obvious movement coming from the bathroom. She'd pushed open the door and there he was: a gaunt pale horror hunched over and rooting around the victim's innards. 

He'd lifted his head as she'd entered the room, blinked at her, then turned away with a dismissive little sound and continued prodding at the exposed guts. 

She'd wasted little time in braining him with her baton and wrestling him into handcuffs, trying very hard to avoid touching his gore-slicked gloves (and _Christ,_ he'd been wearing black rubber gloves that went all the way up to his elbows, like a damn butcher.) All the while she'd been shouting for backup because the scene was supposed to have been _secured_ , there were coppers standing all around outside smoking and jawing and yet somehow this sick freak had managed to creep back in to have another go at fiddling around with his victim's organs. 

Her heart had been pounding. She would always remember that, the thud-thud-thud against her ribs, the roar in her ears, the cold trickle of sweat running steady down the back of her neck and between her shoulder blades. 

_What kind of monster—?_ she'd thought. 

He'd glared up at her from where she had his cheek pressed into the dirty tile floor and had, to her mounting horror, begun to describe (with pinpoint accuracy) her movements that day. He'd never once lost his composure, never once broke his stride. He just went on rattling off facts that he couldn't have possibly known in that deep, eerie monotone of his. 

He'd been verbally eviscerating (her mind had rebelled at the choice of word, but she could imagine it no other way) her coffee preferences by the time Lestrade had burst into the room, and she'd been halfway to convinced that she was next on this maniac's list. 

Instead of helping her subdue the suspect, Lestrade had sighed. Heavily. 

"Sir?" she'd said, and she'd looked up. 

"You can uncuff him," he said. There had been a flush rising in his cheeks, a note of chagrin in his voice. 

She'd gaped at him, truly gaped, because Lestrade had always seemed like a sensible man, a rational man, and yet he couldn't possibly be suggesting that she release the madman she'd just interrupted in the middle of his gory work. 

"He—" Lestrade had groaned, scratched the back of his head, had quite pointedly not looked at the distressing mess spilled out all over the tub. "Sergeant Donovan, this is the consultant I told you about. Sherlock Holmes, remember? The one who comes by sometimes, helps us out—" 

She did remember. He'd mentioned a consultant, someone who liked puzzles and who _didn't have the best people skills._ This, to her, went a bit above and beyond poor people skills. 

"He had his hands in the corpse," she'd said.

"Yeah," Lestrade said faintly, staring up at the ceiling. His nose was flaring. He looked as if he might be ill. "Yeah, he—" 

"I was wearing gloves," Sherlock had said from the ground. He'd had the audacity to sound offended. Him, offended! After providing her with enough nightmare fuel to last the rest of her life.

"I _did_ ask you not to touch the body," Lestrade had said. He'd sounded weary, put-upon, annoyed—but decidedly not horrified. 

"I was _wearing gloves,_ " Sherlock said again. "Don't make me repeat myself. You always make me repeat myself, why do you do that?" 

"Uncuff him," Lestrade tried again. 

She'd shaken her head, hard, feeling suddenly like Alice down the rabbit-hole. They had been chasing a spree killer for almost three days on little sleep. They could find no rhyme or reason behind the selection of the victims, all of whom had been vivisected and left splayed on the ground with their insides on the outside. Horrible stuff. Nightmarish. Things she'd never unsee. And the man she'd just bloody _caught in the act_ was—

"Donovan," Lestrade said, and his voice had finally solidified into something authoritative. 

"He had his _hands_ in the _corpse,_ " she said again. There was an unpleasant smell in the air, mingling with the coppery blood scent. Her stomach gave a little lurch.

"And you've stated the obvious not once but twice now," Sherlock had grumbled into the tile. There was a bruise purpling at his temple. She had hit him very hard with her baton. "Excellent detective work, Lestrade, really. No wonder your killer is still out roaming the streets. It's a miracle you lot were even able to find the body." He'd lifted his head up a bit, sniffed at the air. "Although you _were_ able to find some time for a midnight snack. Donuts, Lestrade? Bit of a cliché, don't you think?" 

"Donovan," Lestrade said again. 

And so she'd lifted her knee off of Sherlock's back, yanked at the cuffs with perhaps a bit more force than necessary while she unlocked them. 

He'd pushed himself up to his knees, stripped off his bloody gloves and dropped them to the ground. Then he'd stood, rinsed his hands in the sink, and reached primly for a shirt and suit jacket that had been neatly folded on the countertop. He shook out the shirt before slipping into it, working the buttons with long fingers. 

She'd looked helplessly at Lestrade, whose face was pinched into one of the most exasperated expressions she'd ever seen him wear. "He had his—" 

"Hands in the corpse, _yes,_ I do think we've established that fact with some degree of certainty," Sherlock looked at her as he shrugged into his suit jacket. "If any of you had bothered to check the stomach contents, you would see that this man recently consumed chocolate cake." 

With that, she'd realized that the unpleasant smell hanging in the room was chocolate—heavy, rich chocolate mixing with the already overpowering scent of blood. Her stomach gave another lurch and she bit down on her tongue, hard, tried to distract herself from gagging.

"We don't check the stomach contents, Sherlock," Lestrade had said with a little resigned sigh that seemed altogether too calm for the situation. "That's not what we do. The morgue—" 

"Why would you bother waiting around for an autopsy when the answer to your problem is already conveniently on display?" Sherlock stalked back over towards the tub and its grisly contents, pointed down at it with a bit of an over exaggerated gesture. He paused, looked back up at them. "Oh. Perhaps I should clarify that _I_ didn't cut him open?" 

"Yeah, Sherlock, we know that—" Lestrade had sounded impatient, irritated. 

Sally had thought they really could do with a bit more clarification on that end. 

"Your killer vivisects his victims. Not exactly difficult to get a good look." 

"Why did you take your clothes off?" she'd blurted, unable to hold it in any longer. "What kind of—what kind of _freak_ gets undressed at a crime scene to splash around in entrails?"

Sherlock had fixed an unnervingly steady gaze on her. His eyes were pale, nearly colourless. For a moment she'd felt as flayed open as the corpse in the tub. "I didn't want to get blood on my shirt." 

"Yeah, all right," Lestrade had cut in. "The cake?" 

"Chocolate," Sherlock said, looking quite pleased with himself. 

There had been a long, dragging silence during which Sally had been positive that Lestrade was finally going to come to his senses and put him back in handcuffs. 

"Chocolate cake," Sherlock said finally, speaking slowly, looking back and forth between them as though he found them both to be very, very stupid. 

"Yes, chocolate cake, we've got that part," Lestrade said. "And I care about chocolate cake because?" 

"The man in the bathtub has been dead for approximately forty-eight hours. The last thing he ate was chocolate cake. Same as your last three victims." 

She didn't want to know how he knew that, about the last victims. 

"So they all had a sweet tooth," Lestrade had said. 

A ripple of frustration had passed right over Sherlock's face. "They all ate the _same_ chocolate cake," he said. "If you return to the restaurant where victim number one was last seen, I'm sure you'll be able to confirm that your other three victims also dined there. And _while_ you're confirming that, you might want to take some time out of your busy schedules to arrest the pastry chef who thought it would be a brilliant idea to propose to his girlfriend by baking the ring into the dessert." He tsked the 't' sound at the end of his sentence, squaring his shoulders and looking rather pleased with himself. 

Her stomach gave another little lurch.

"Chocolate lava cake, judging by the consistency, although it really is rather difficult to say for certain at this point. He's had some time to digest." 

"So this guy killed four people—" Lestrade started. 

"Because one of them ate the ring," Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Obviously." 

She'd stared at him for a moment, then turned to stare at Lestrade instead. Did he honestly believe—

"Easy enough mistake on a busy night," Sherlock said. "Plates get switched around, the wrong table gets the wrong order, next thing you know—" he clapped his hands together and inclined his head towards the victim. "Must have been quite the rock to justify all this fuss. Good evening." 

He'd left the room with a bounce in his step. He'd been smiling. _Smiling._

Lestrade had looked at her. His expression was apologetic. He'd shrugged. "He's—he can be a bit much. But he gets the job done, yeah? And we can use the help." 

She'd said nothing. The smell of chocolate and blood was suffocating in the small room. 

He'd been right about the pastry chef. She had not really considered that a point in his favour. Nor had she ever been able to eat chocolate cake again, but that was neither here nor there. 

So no, it had never been difficult for her to believe that Sherlock Holmes was capable of murder. None of her subsequent interactions with the man had given her any reason to change her mind. 

Yet she'd been wrong. And the death of an innocent man (a weird man, an unlikable man, but an innocent man nonetheless) had weighed heavily on her conscience. 

Lestrade was still talking. Sherlock's face was still on the television screen. He looked older, she thought. Tired. Like the last two years had not been easy on him. 

"—wasn't guilty," Lestrade was saying. "But we knew that. He doesn't blame anyone. It was a setup, we were supposed to believe—"

She could not quite focus on his words. He was happy. That was good. He'd felt terribly guilty, all this time. 

Lestrade had trusted Sherlock. He'd liked him. 

She'd never trusted him. And she hadn't liked him. But, as it turned out, she hadn't really wanted him dead, either. 

"I'm glad," she said. She meant it. 

She thought she might be happy too. That tight cold ball of tension in her gut had begun to unspool. It was like catching a whiff of fresh air after years of holding her breath. 

"Don't think this means I'm going to be welcoming him to any of my crime scenes," she added.

"If he wants to, I'm sure he'll find a way," Lestrade said. 

She thought of that long ago Stratford flat, the smell of blood and chocolate cake, the way that Sherlock had got upstairs and into that bathroom without anyone ever noticing he'd been there. The way he'd gone and died and come back without anyone ever catching on. The bounce in his step when he felt he'd been particularly clever. 

She wondered if he'd still be like that. If he'd still clap his hands and grin inappropriately and whirl around in his coat like a kid on Christmas morning. 

She sort of hoped he would.


End file.
